© 2022 Olga López
© 2022 Urantia Association of Spain
Newsletter of the Urantia Association of Spain
Light and Life — February 2022
¶ In this number
- Editorial – February 2022
- Works – our recommendations of the month
- History and teachings – Chronicles of the life of Jesus
- A Children’s Guide to The Urantia Book: Thought Adjuster
- Books – our recommendations of the month
- Other spiritual growth books
- Video – our recommendation of the month
- Navigating through life – The tale of the Japanese bamboo
- Urantia Reflections: Universal Truth, Without Dogmas
- My favorite paragraph
- Urantia Quiz: Victorian Left
- About the Light and Life newsletter
¶ Editorial – February 2022
M. José Sánchez Santamaría
Follow Jesus
Stop for a moment, please.
Slow down your fast pace.
Stops the continuous sliding by the slippery daily reality.
Uwais, the Sufi, was once asked: “What has Grace given you?” And he answered them:
“When I wake up in the morning, I feel like a man who is not sure if he will live until night.”
They asked him again:
“But don’t all men know this?” And Uwais replied: “Yes, they know, but not everyone feels it.”
No one has ever gotten drunk on the basis of “intellectually” understanding the word WINE.
¶ Works – our recommendations of the month
This work is a synthesis of another more extensive work that Bill Sadler wrote on the densest topics of The Urantia Book such as the origin of the universe, entitled Study of the master universe. Without a doubt this work will help readers of the book to be clearer about the sequence of ages that culminated in bringing into existence the cosmos and the divine personalities involved. In support of this work is this other with supporting graphics.
The force of gravity on the atomic nucleus prophesied in 1934 (Ken Glasziou)
This article, although brief, is very illuminating on how physics is gradually getting closer to what the revelators affirm in The Urantia Book about the atomic model and the forces that hold atoms together. Remember that the ultimaton has not been discovered as such by science. Why did the revelators tell us about it, when it seems to be still a long way from being discovered? Well, maybe there are already scientists who are on the right track.
To the educators and believers of the fifth revelation (Olga López)
This article is an analysis of the section “Instructions for educators and believers” of document 159 (The tour of the Decapolis). These instructions were part of a talk that Jesus gave to express “the principles that should guide those who preach the truth” and “promote all who teach the gospel of the kingdom.” And that is perfectly applicable to us as readers committed to the teachings of the fifth revelation.
Astronomy and Superuniverses (Troy R. Bishop)
In this work by Troy R. Bishop, translated by Jan Herca, there is a review of the organization of the master universe according to The Urantia Book and an attempt is made to fit in with current astronomical knowledge and the measurements currently used to calculate astronomical distances. The disagreements that still exist between science and the fifth revelation are also exposed, on the other hand logical, since science must advance following a scientific method that is far removed from the methods of revelation.
¶ History and teachings – Chronicles of the life of Jesus
JOURNALISTIC ACCOUNT OF THE LIFE AND TEACHINGS OF JESUS ACCORDING TO THE URANTIA BOOK
We present the following installment of the chronicles of the life of Jesus, which on this occasion contains what the revealers tell us in document 130. Within the PDF you will see a button from which you can access the text of the document from the Foundation’s website Urantia.
¶ Children’s Guide to The Urantia Book: Thought Adjuster
We continue to review the secondary work A Children’s Guide to The Urantia Book, by Mary Livingston. This is the next chapter, dedicated to the Thought Adjuster, and it begins like this:
“The Father resides very distant and it takes a long time to reach Paradise, so He sends a special gift to each of us. When we are about five years old and make our first moral decision, the Father sends us his special gift.”
Download the entire chapter in PDF format
¶ Books – our recommendations of the month
Ideario (Santiago Flores)
In the words of its author: “Ideario is the product of three main factors: an early contact with poetry in a home where, as a child, the Spanish Ballads, Bécquer’s Rhymes, José Hernández’s Martín Fierro and Osiris’s Grillo Nochero Rodríguez Castillos were daily reading; an inherited propensity (from my father and his father) for writing poetry; and finally more than fifteen years of contact with the philosophy of The Urantia Book”. In truth, it is not very often to come across Urantia poetry, and this one is certainly very worthwhile.
Read the full review on our website here
Jesus of Nazareth (Jan Herca)
All readers of the book feel a special affection for the figure of Jesus, the protagonist of this story, so it is easy for us to immerse ourselves in the story as if we were there. This first installment of “Jesus of Nazareth” narrates the events of the Master’s life from his retirement on Mount Hermon, where he became aware of his true identity for the first time since he came to our world, until the arrest of John the Baptist, going through the extraordinary events that occurred during the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan. All as told in The Urantia Book.
Read the full review on our website here
¶ Other spiritual growth books
The encounter with reality (Vicente Ferrer)
I think by now we all know Vicente Ferrer, a former Jesuit living in southern India (now deceased) who dedicated a good part of his life to helping improve the situation of the dalith, the poorest of the poor in India. Basing his exposition on “the four existential pillars of the Universe”: man, God, humanity and “the world as it is”, Vicente Ferrer dedicates himself to explaining his simple philosophy of life, avoiding any claim to absolute truth and all dogmatism, with terms that are sometimes surprisingly coincident with what is said in The Urantia Book. Which is not surprising, since we know that he read it and showed great interest in what it contained.
Read the full review on our website here
Project for a Global Ethic (Hans Küng)
«Impossible to survive without a global ethic. World peace is impossible without religious peace. Religious peace is impossible without religious dialogue."
Thus begins this book by Hans Küng, a late Catholic theologian. In this essay, the author is in charge of systematically arguing his reflections to reach the conclusions expressed by the three aforementioned sentences.
Küng affirms in this book that ethics must be based on “the Unconditioned”; any ethics that is not based on transcendent (religious) values is useless, it is not a source of meaning for our lives. If we also take into account that the lack of values that afflicts Western society is leading us to a dead end; What’s more, it is endangering the very survival of humanity, the only solution to avoid our self-destruction is the creation of a global ethic that governs all areas of our society (culture, economy, politics, human relations, etc.)
Read the full review on our website here
¶ Video – our recommendation of the month
Andites in Egypt (Urantia Writings Studies)
Have you ever wondered what the direct descendants of the violet race would look like? And the Andites? This month we recommend another of the videos from the channel Urantia Writing Studies, published at the beginning of January of this year, which deals with the always interesting and enigmatic Egyptians of Antiquity and their relationship with the Andite migrations, beginning in the second Eden, spread the violet blood across the ancient world, creating advanced civilizations in their wake.
¶ Navigating through life – The tale of the Japanese bamboo
Legend has it that a long, long time ago, two farmers were walking through a flea market when they stopped right before the stall of a man selling seeds. They were surprised when they saw ones they had never seen before.
One of them asked the seller what seeds those were, to which the merchant replied that they were bamboo seeds, some extremely special seeds that came from the Far East.
Intrigued and very curious, the farmer could not contain himself and asked him a new question: “And why are these seeds so special?” The merchant encouraged him to take them, warning him that he would find out without much complication, since they only needed fertilizer and water.
Finally curiosity won out and the two farmers decided to take the bamboo seeds home with them. They planted, watered, and fertilized them strictly following all the instructions the vendor had given them.
After not a very long time had passed, the two farmers were somewhat uncomfortable and saddened because the result had not been as expected: the seeds barely grew. It was then that one of the farmers told the other that he was thinking that the merchant had tricked them. Such was his anger that he finally decided not to continue watering the seeds or fertilizing them.
But the other farmer, however, thought that he had nothing to lose, so he decided to continue keeping the seeds: every day he watered them again and fertilized them with care. And so, time passed but they still did not bear fruit.
However, one fine day, when the farmer was about to throw in the towel and stop growing them, he was surprised to find that the bamboo had grown and reached a height of 25 meters in just 5 weeks.
This story so beautiful and at the same time so short shows us one of the best lessons we can receive in life. The bamboo takes seven years to establish its roots well in the earth; once this time has passed, at seven years and six weeks it begins to grow vigorously.
The farmers expected this plant to appear overnight, as often happens with our projects. Perhaps they thought that the seeds were not fertile or that they had been deceived. However, one of them decided not to give up and continue offering their care. This farmer discovered, when he least expected it, that everything he had done to see it grow had finally paid off.
This story offers us a very interesting moral, since many times we think that we are tired or we are not capable, we despair and lose patience.
However, when one works day by day for a goal with perseverance, when we least expect it, the fruits will appear and everything will make sense. It doesn’t matter if days, weeks or months go by: if we don’t lose faith, everything we’ve been fighting for will come.
If we give up early and stop watering the bamboo, this beautiful plant will never see the light and we will never be able to enjoy its beauty. The same will happen with our dreams: we will never see them shine.
Source: https://www.natursan.net/conoces-el-cuento-del-bambu-japones/
¶ Urantia Reflections: Universal Truth, No Dogmas
Miguel Majorca
The human being, in his continuous evolution, has been conditioned and subjugated by religious power; a religious power of such social influence that, throughout history, and with the excuse of its spiritualization, but with hidden intentions of manipulative and political control, have turned it into a skeptical being with an almost total rejection of said religions “ saviors”.
Because of all these falsehoods, hypocrisies, dogmas, myths, rituals, etc. that they have used with the intention of keeping it in the most opaque ignorance and lack of culture, these religions have managed to create a model of a skeptical society, devoid of values such as respect, morality, ethics… a human profile so incredulous, selfish and without hope for the future that the coexistence system has been disfigured to the point of absurdity, an irrational coexistence, where consumerism, ostentation, speculation, pollution and many other nonsense are the bases that sustain this “poor” society.
It is sad that, being a technologically and scientifically advanced civilization that we are, religions in general have achieved a worrying distance between science and spiritual philosophy. They have made values such as inner growth and awakening of consciousness hardly have meaning; a worrying social imbalance that is quite dangerous, because science, with all its technological advances, and without a solid ethical-moral foundation that harmonizes these great differences between the two, could lead us to chaos and even our possible annihilation as a civilization.
¶ My favorite paragraph
Gloria Andreu
Choosing a single paragraph from The Urantia Book is a somewhat difficult task, because if I open the first book I believe that there is not a single document, section or page that is not underlined. Some paragraphs are true jewels, if not all; others stand out for their beauty; others are pure philosophy; others are for discussion for a long time, so it is very difficult for me to choose one.
I have opted for one that more than a paragraph for me is like a mantra, because I use it when sometimes I do not see the way out of any problem or difficult situation that we have all had throughout our lives.
I have chosen it for its simplicity, and because more cannot be said in so few words, the paragraph is:
“with God all things are possible.” (UB 163:3.2)
Since I read it for the first time, it struck me, but when I read it again I realized that it encompasses truth, beauty and goodness, I always speak in a subjective way. Truth because you only have to read the sentence to understand that it is absolutely true. The beauty is in its simplicity, because for me simplicity is beauty; and goodness because the Father, out of love for all his creatures, tells us that if we believe and trust in him, he will help us get up without asking for anything in return in the face of any obstacle that comes our way. And if all this were not enough, it also encompasses something that is so important for all ascending evolutionary beings in order to reach the Universal Father, such as faith, because you have to have faith to believe that “with God all things are possible.”
¶ Urantian Quiz: Victorian Left
I am Victoriano Izquierdo Ramírez. I live in Seville and I am retired. My wife and I have three children and four grandchildren and have been reading The Urantia Book since 1992.
- How did you get to The Urantia Book and why do you think you found it?
Since I was little I have had a great love of reading. It caught my attention that one day, discussing my interest in reading the Gospels with the Religion teacher, he tried to dissuade me because they did not want the faithful to read these texts if they were not commented on by the Church, because they could misrepresent their meaning.
Over the years I bought a MAS ALLA magazine dedicated to the life of Jesus. There was a very interesting article written by Antonio Moya that made reference to The Urantia Book. At that time the publication of the first Trojan Horse was a publishing boom. A co-worker who was very impressed with his reading lent it to me to read. It didn’t make such an impression on me because I knew the Gospels, something unusual then. My wife casually contacted Josefina, who lived in our neighborhood and held meetings for The Urantia Book readers at her home. We still did not have the book translated into Spanish. When Esteban brought them from the United States, we realized that the translation was horrible.
- What was your first impression when reading it?
The first impression was very impressive because its agenda was very broad and dealt with new and unknown concepts for most of the seekers, who had read esoteric, spiritual and self-help books that were very much in vogue at that time.
¶ About the Light and Life newsletter
Light and Life is the newsletter of the Urantia Association of Spain. From 2005 to 2016 it was published in PDF format and distributed by mail and email to the association’s reader list, but it is currently distributed in newsletter format from content in HTML format.
If you want to receive the newsletter in your email, contact the association to subscribe to the mailing list.
All papers and news from readers and study groups are welcome, so if you want to share any side work, writing, outline, image, etc., you can send it to the association and we will publish it previous evaluation of its suitability. Likewise, the Communication commission of the board of directors of the Urantia Association of Spain reserves the right to edit it so that it meets minimum spelling quality.
¶ References
- Article of the Magazine Light and Life Online: https://aue.urantia-association.org/newsletter/luz-y-vida-febrero-2022/